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Language: en
You know how when your phone runs out of
batteries, it's like boom, off like a
light. Same deal with your mitochondria.
You actually need to keep your
mitochondria in good shape. So you can
have that [music] energy. Even just two
cups of hot made with a day for a month
can double the number of stem cells
[music] in your bloodstream improves
resiliency of your blood vessels. So you
can actually deliver blood a lot better,
trigger that brown fat to turn on
thermogenesis, which will then draw
energy from the bad fat and the good fat
will actually [music] burn it down. And
then you want to have more energy for
your mitochondria. Eat fats. That's one
of the best ways to protect your
mitochondria and support longevity. Now,
you're saying, "Wait a minute. You just
told me to eat fats." One of the best
ways to keep your mitochondria in good
shape is to
[music]
know how when your phone runs out of
batteries, it's like boom, off like a
light. Same deal with your mitochondria.
So, you want to keep your, you know, if
you want to keep your phone charged all
the time, uh, you actually need to keep
your mitochondria in good shape so you
can have that energy. All right. Now,
what does that have to do with aging?
All right. Well, it turns out that as we
age, as we get older, uh, our
mitochondria start to wear down. Now, I
got to tell you, we start to age from
the time we're born, right? So, when
you're one year old, you're twice as old
you were when you were actually born.
All right? But as we get into uh middle
age and older, people naturally feel
like they're slowing down. And part of
the reason is that our mitochondria is
also slowing down. All right? We have
less energy, fewer mitochondria. Um and
sometimes the mitochondria that stick
around are not functioning or even like
they're inactive mitochondria. You need
to clear those out. All right? So when
this happens to the mitochondria during
the natural aging process, it impacts
your energy, slows down your metabolism,
and makes you feel more sluggish. All
right, I got a myth that I got to bust
because a lot of people think that
energy is just about how much sleep that
you get. All right, not true. A lot of
people think about energy is just about
how many calories they're actually
eating, actually about how your
mitochondria are actually functioning.
So this is why you want to know about
mitochondria. This is why I'm making
this video right now. And not only do
you want to know about your
mitochondria, you want to keep them as
healthy as possible over the course of
your life so you can optimize your
health during longevity. It's called
health span. And just being healthy, you
know, like you don't want to be just a
crashed out on a on a bed. Uh even if
you live to 100, 150, you want to
actually have enough energy to make
every single year you have, no matter
how many years, worth it. So what do I
mean by this? Well, think about your car
battery, right? Your car battery is what
allows your car to start and then once
your car started, your battery is around
if you need it to keep it moving uh uh
smoothly. Mitochondria kind of like a
car battery. All right? And but they
need care in order to be able to keep
doing their job. That's really really
important that you need to actually take
good care of your mitochondria. Super
important. One of the best ways to keep
your mitochondria in good shape is to
lower your caloric intake. eat less over
a course of a day. But if you want to
actually really do that in a way that
optimizes your metabolism as well, all
right, which is good for your
mitochondria and good for longevity, do
it through intermittent fasting. All
right, might sound kind of
counterintuitive because you're giving
your body a break from constantly
eating. Uh how does that actually help
you gain energy? Because doesn't eating
actually give you energy? Well, it turns
out that fasting helps your mitochondria
work more efficiently. In other words,
not eating, okay? Uh, a state of of not
eating, no fuel, actually makes your
mitochondria work faster. The lower the
number of calories you eat, the more
your mitochondria actually feel like
they need to be uh supercharged and a
whole system of mitochondria needs to be
cleaned out. Now there's a process
called mphagy.
Mi t o p h a g y. You might have heard
about this uh in on social media or
other people's podcasts. Mphagy is a
simple process where your body your
cells clean out uh old or damaged
mitochondria. Think about like spring
cleaning inside your cells but aimed at
the mitochondria. That's why it's called
mitoagi. Fiji means eating out but this
is spring cleaning. taking out the old
uh in order to be able to replace them
with the new. Right? If you got a sock
drawer that's pretty full, you got to
actually take out the ones that have
holes in them or that are worn out
before you can actually uh put new ones
in the drawer, right? So, you want to
actually do the clean out. And that's
actually what mphagy does. And that's
what fasting actually does for your
cells, right? And by the way, that sock
drawer analogy is really, really
important because we all want to feel a
lot better wearing a pair of new socks
rather than wearing ones with holes in
them. Right? So that's exactly mphagy.
All right? And intermittent fasting
helps your body, your cells clean out
the old and replace it with a new. It's
a refreshing part of your body's energy.
Those little nuclear batteries. All
right? Out with the old, in with the
new. When you are fasting, your body
switches from burning glucose, which
might be in your blood, okay? It
switches from burning glucose for fuel
to burn to switch to burning fat for
fuel. Right now, when you're burning fat
for fuel, this keeps your mitochondria
uh fresh because it gives them a break
from constantly burning down glucose.
During the day, when you're eating, your
mitochondria is burning down glucose.
Guess what? When you're fasting at night
and you're sleeping, you're giving your
mitochondria a break from having to do
glucose. Now they can actually uh try
they can often burn fat as well. Now I
don't recommend doing anything to an
extreme. So you know when people are
hearing about this I I have sometimes
biohackers will say okay so what if I
fast for 16 hours? Okay that works. If
you can maintain that schedule that's
fine. What if I fasted 20 hours and I
put squeeze all my eating into four
hours? That's I would say that's
probably an extreme. Uh you're not going
to get more mphagy out of that. All
right, I would say, you know,
intermittently fasting for 16 and eight
is probably the most I would recommend
anybody to do if you can fit that in.
Tip number two for your mitochondria,
eat healthy fats. That's one of the best
ways to protect your mitochondria and
support longevity. Now, you're saying,
"Wait a minute. You just told me to eat
fats. I said eat healthy fats because
not all fats are created equal, right?
Like, I'm not telling you to eat butter.
I'm not telling you to eat lard. If you
focus on healthy fats, the healthy fats
are um basically like in extra virgin
olive oil, Evvo, Evo. All right? or in
tree nuts, you know, uh walnuts,
macadamia,
uh pistachios,
uh those kinds of pecans, healthy nuts
have healthy oils. Um avocados actually
also have healthy fats, monoounsaturated
fatty acids, mufas is what we call them.
And also fish that contain healthy
omega-3 fatty acids. So, I just gave you
a bunch of choices of things that you
would naturally consider, you know,
healthy and probably part of your uh
diet anyway. Uh but if it or not, you
should consider adding extra-virgin
olive oil, tree nuts. All right, if you
don't have an allergy, avocados, and
seafood that contain healthy omega-3
fatty acids. Now, what are some of those
seafoods? I wrote all about them in my
book, Eat to Beat Your Diet. There's a
whole chapter on seafoods with healthy
omega-3 fatty acids. So, I would go
check it out there as well. This is all
about providing your body with the right
kind of fat, okay? And the kind of fat
that helps your mitochondria function
optimally. All right. So, the healthy
fats, like I told you, omega-3 fatty
acids and seafood, some plants, omega-3s
actually uh have been shown to protect
your mitochondria from damage because
they they lower inflammation, these
omega-3 fatty acids, right? So if you
have inflammation throughout your body,
that inflammation, just like oxidative
stress, can damage your mitochondria. So
you want to throw a shield over the
mitochondria, so they're actually
working better. They're not going to be
damaged as much. Try some omega-3 fatty
acids, right? Inflammation harms the
body. Inflammation harms mitochondria.
So reducing inflammation is one easy
step to help your mitochondria and
promote energy uh production and
cellular health. Right? So again, you
want to find out the seafoods that can
actually do this. There's a whole
chapter, chapter eight, I call it the
daily catch. And look, here's a whole
list of seafoods uh that are all
delicious uh that you can actually
choose that are going to be actually
good for you. We all know that s salmon
is good for you. And we know sardines
and mackerel and anchovies, but did you
know that halibit is also good for you?
It's a white mild fish, sea bass, who
doesn't like Mediterranean sea bass?
Hake is another white mild fish.
Seabbream uh is another one. Turbet,
another mild white fish as well. Okay,
so not just a super oily fish, the tiny
ones that are that taste fishy. You got
all kinds of choices in order to get
this type of healthy omega-3s. By the
way, walnuts actually, from a tree nut
perspective, walnuts actually are a
great source of omega-3s. Well, it's a
plant-based source of omega-3 fatty
acids. And again, this is a kind of a
healthy fuel uh for your body that helps
to reduce inflammation. Eating dark
chocolate can actually reduce food
cravings. Now, you might think the
opposite. You might say, you know, when
I eat some chocolate, I can't stop
eating it. It's so delicious. But
clinical studies have actually shown
that uh uh even the smell of dark
chocolate, like if you're somebody who
wants to savor dark chocolate, don't,
you know, eat a whole bar like that. um
savor it. All right. Um I I think
drinking a cup of hot coffee, black
coffee with dark chocolate is a great
way of doing it or even tea. All right.
But even the smell of dark chocolate,
85% cacao as well as eating the
chocolate uh decreases a hormone that
the in the body called ghrein. Now
ghrein is known as a hunger hormone. So,
the smell of dark chocolate lowers your
hunger. All right? And when your hunger
is lowered, you're less likely to
actually um uh crave other foods. Uh and
you're less likely to actually overeat
as well. Uh and by the way, the
pro-anthocyanidins, they have other very
very important health features and
benefits as well. They lower
inflammation. All right? Um the
proanthocyanins also help your body
release stem cells into your
bloodstream. These stem cells, all
right, they live in your bone marrow.
They come out of your bone marrow, like
bees coming out of a hive. Um, and
eating dark chocolate can actually do
this. And, uh, and they're looking for
problems where they can fix. It's kind
of like sending out the highway root
crew to look for potholes to patch up so
that the traffic can flow more smoothly.
That's what these stem cells do. They
cause regenerative healing from the
inside out. All right. And how do we
[snorts] know that's true? Well,
clinical studies have shown that, you
know, having even just two cups of hot
chocolate made with dark chocolate a day
for a month can double the number of
stem cells in your bloodstream for
repairing and it actually improves the
resiliency of your blood vessels. So,
you can actually deliver blood a lot
better. Now, the other thing that's
really interesting is that dark
chocolate releases triggers the release
of endorphins. Now, these are feel-good
hormones in your brain. And when you
have the endorphins being released, it
naturally reduces cravings for unhealthy
sugary foods. Drink green tea. Now,
green tea, as you probably have heard,
is good for so many aspects of health.
But when it comes to having energy, it's
really about the polyphenols that are in
green tea called katakans.
Well, okay. Also, the caffeine that's
actually in green tea gives you energy
as well. All right. uh and all this
benefit that you get uh from T is
actually from the polyphenol the kakin
called EGCG. So what does that stand
for? Um epi gallo katakin 3 galate. All
right, epigalocatakin 3 galate. I'm not
going to ask you to say it three times
because I could barely do it myself. But
just know that people who are
researchers like me, like we know what's
actually in it. Now, the polyphenol
activates your metabolism by triggering
your brown fat. Now, if you didn't know
what brown fat is, you should listen to
another video where I talk about brown
fat or you should read my book, Eat to
Beat Your Diet. And if you haven't read
it, let me show you. This is what it
looks like. Eat to Beat Your Diet. It's
not a diet book. It's an anti-diet book.
It talks about how you can eat foods and
drink beverages like tea that activate
your metabolism naturally so you don't
have to go uh on a diet. Now, one of the
things that tea and other foods do, got
to read about the other foods in my
book, they activate your brown fat. Now,
your brown fat is a special kind of
beneficial fat that's found in the body.
It's not lumpy bumpy like the harmful
white fat that's under your arm or under
your chin. It's not the muffin top that
you have or it's not in your thighs or
your butt. Brown fat is actually wafer
thin and it's not located close to the
surface of your skin. It's actually on
both sides of your neck, like close to
the bone. All right? A little bit behind
your breast bone, a little bit tiny bit
between your shoulder blades, and then a
little bit in your belly. And this brown
fat can be triggered by green tea. Okay?
And there's other foods as well that can
trigger the brown fat. And it's also
much foods. Uh cold temperature will
also trigger it. So, think about what
how people are talking about the
benefits of the cold plunge for your
metabolism. That's real. that triggers
your brown fat. And uh and when you
trigger your brown fat, it fires up.
What do I mean by fire up? What I mean
to say is that when you trigger your
brown fat, it turns on a process called
thermogenesis.
Now, thermogenesis is exactly what it
sounds like, thermal heat. Genesis
generating heat. So, when you trigger
your brown fat by drinking green tea,
you're triggering triggering the
generation of heat uh in the brown fat.
How does it do this? Well, the brown fat
actually generates heat by activating uh
something called mitochondria.
A lot of people talking about
mitochondria these days. Mitochondria
are like little tiny nuclear batteries
that are inside your cells inside the
brown fat cells. And there's a lot of
them in brown fat. All right? In fact,
there's so many of them that the
mitochondria which have a lot of iron in
it in them. Okay? When and what happens
to iron when they oxidize? They turn
they rust, right? Turns brown. A lot of
these uh brown oxidized mitochondria get
together. It makes the entire fat brown
looking. That's why brown fat is brown.
So if you're ever wondering like why do
they call that brown fat? Because a lot
of mitochondria with a lot of iron. It's
kind of like rusting. It all gets
together. And these are the power packs.
These are the nuclear batteries of your
brown fat. And when you drink green tea
or go to a cold plunge, you fire up the
brown fat. It goes like it's like a like
um like in your if you have a gas stove,
what do you do? You turn on the thing.
Click, click, click, whoosh. You get the
flame. That's what happens when you're
actually turning on thermogenesis in
your brown by triggering the
mitochondria. [snorts] All right? Green
tea will do this. Now, you're when
you're triggering the mitochondria,
you're generating energy. Okay? Uh where
does it draw the fuel from to be able to
generate this heat and this energy? It
draws uh the brown fat draws that energy
from your stores of white fat. That's
the wiggly jiggly stuff you don't want.
That is the stuff, the visceral fat
that's buried in a tube of your body
deep inside your belly. All right?
That's the stuff that's dangerous and
you don't want it. It's very
inflammatory. You want to burn that
stuff down. And brown fat will do it.
And green tea will trigger that brown
fat to turn on thermogenesis, which will
then draw energy from the bad fat. And
the good fat will actually burn it down.
And then you actually have more energy.
Okay? Overeing is putting in too much
fuel into your body. Now you're
overloading your metabolism. You just
cleaned out your metabolism, reset your
metabolism the night before, now you're
overloading it. You're not making
progress this way. To make progress, eat
modestly. All right? In fact, I tell
people to whatever your eyes want to
take on the plate, take only twothirds
of it. Keep a third away. That's a good
start. All right? People who want to
really go down in a portion, they they
just only leave a third on their plate.
And by the way, eat slowly. When you eat
fast, it's a lot easier to clean your
plate and and and therefore to overeat.
All right? And we always want to put big
huge portions. Think about what it's
like for you at a buffet table, you
know, or at a cafeteria where you get to
serve yourself. Almost always going to
put more food on a plate uh than you
actually need to eat. So, portion size
down. And then here's another little tip
that will help you prevent from
overeating is eat slowly.
Eat mindfully. Don't get distracted. If
you're scrolling on your device and
you're, you know, reading or watching a
movie, makes it really easy for you to
overeat. All right? And eat too quickly.
And if you eat too quickly, um, you're
not not letting your body adjust to the
volume your food putting in. If you eat
slowly, I guarantee you, even though
you're taking a smaller portion on your
plate, if you eat slowly and mindfully,
think about uh the food that you're
eating. I I call it savoring the food,
you enjoy the taste of the food. If you
eat with other people, have a
conversation. Don't feel like you've got
to clean your plate. All right? I I have
friends who actually are really, really
fast eaters. Not a healthy uh thing to
do. When you eat slowly, you tend to eat
less because your stomach stretches as
food gets into it. All right? And those
stretch receptors tell your brain, "Oh,
I'm getting full. Let's slow down a
little bit." And pretty soon, your
brain's going to say, "We're done." All
right? And that's how you prevent
overeating by eating more slowly, not
being distracted. All right? Eating with
somebody else, a dining partner is
actually a good way to do this because
then you'll actually have conversation.
But also remember to savor your food
when you are sitting down to take a
movement break
during a day. What am I talking about a
movement break? Well, look, uh here's
the thing. Most of us actually sit in
front of a computer most of the time.
It's getting harder and harder to be
physically active as part of what we're
doing every single day. Now, you
probably do some exercise if you're
working out, okay? But even if you work
out, you're probably sitting long
periods of time during a day, right?
that you know that basically that
sedentary behavior. We know from all the
clinical studies that have gone on
sedentary behavior set you up for
chronic disease and all kinds of badness
that can actually occur. So uh and it
also makes you feel more tired. So if
you get on your feet every few hours and
move around I don't have any rules or
instructions of exactly have to move
around. I call that getting up and
moving around a movement break. Okay?
It's important because it turns out
sitting for long periods of time, okay?
And for working on a laptop slows down
the metabolism, all right? Makes you
feel sluggish, makes you feel like you
have less energy. And when you're
sitting and feeling sluggish, um you're
more likely to actually reach for a
snack. And then you're not you're not
being mindful of what you're doing.
You're eating, you're staring, you're
typing or whatever you're actually
doing, and you're looking for a snack to
give you a little pickme up. All right?
But it's really the lack of energy that
you're feeling is from not moving
around. So, back to my my tip, my hack.
Every few hours, all right, every two,
three hours, and you can set your phone
to to remind you if you uh need a
reminder,
stop what you're doing, get up, take a
short movement break. All right? Even
five minutes, not very much time. Move
around to get up your energy. All right?
Because when you're moving, you're
getting uh blood flow to happen to your
muscles and your brain. You're
delivering more oxygen and nutrients.
You're going to feel more alert for
sure. All right. Uh movement also
improves your body's insulin
sensitivity. So your cell your
metabolism is working more efficiently.
That's also going to give you more
energy. All right. So, how do you take a
movement break? Um, whenever you know
you're going to be sitting for a while,
like I said, set a timer in your phone
if you need to or your smartwatch. It's
going to remind you to stand up and move
around. And by the way, I'm not talking
about training for a marathon, okay? Or
going to the gym or going for a swim.
Sure, that's good, too. But I'm talking
about more regular movement breaks when
you have to sit for long periods of
time. Uh, and you don't have to break
into a sweat. just even getting up and
stretching, doing some jumping jacks or
push-ups or just walking around your
office or your home, go up and walking
down a couple of stairs. I remember when
I I used to work in the lab and, you
know, when we're doing experiments,
sometimes we'd have long periods of time
sitting, you know, as we're doing our
experiments, I would have to take a
break every couple of uh of um hours and
then I would actually walk the stairs to
the lab. All right? always come back
feeling a little bit more energized and
charged and my brain was working a
little bit better. Can focus on the
research. All right. Obviously, if the
weather's good and you can swing it, go
outside, take a quick walk outside. I'm
talking about five minutes. You don't
have to, you know, you don't you have to
go for a trek. All right. Um being in
nature also lowers cortisol levels and
lowering cortisol levels uh also lowers
your craving tendencies. All right? So,
you're less likely to reach for some
junk food. All right? So try taking some
breaks. Your body is definitely going to
thank you for it. Prioritize eating
foods that contain a lot of bioactives.
So what do I mean by this? Well,
bioactives are just natural chemicals,
mother nature's chemicals that she's put
into plants and plant-based foods,
fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes,
seeds, all those grains. All those
actually have [snorts] natural
bioactives. These are micronutrients.
Okay, not the macros. All right, that's
protein and carbs and and fat. These are
micronutrients that activate your body's
health defense systems, that activate
your metabolism. All right? And they
activate also your mitochondria, right?
So, how do they do this? Well, one thing
as I mentioned to you before is that
these bioactives found in plant-based
foods. Think about eating the rainbow,
right? red bell peppers, strawberries,
guava, tomatoes,
uh different types of leafy greens. You
know, green doesn't seem like it's a
color, but it's a really brilliant
color. And if you look at all the
vegetables and look at all those shades
of green, it's part of the rainbow. All
right? They all contain bioactives. If
it's colorful and it's found in the
produce section, it's going to have the
kind of bioactives you want. You know
what they do? They lower inflammation,
which is helps your mitochondria perform
better, just like omega-3 fatty acids.
But the other thing they do is they are
antioxidant. So, they protect your
mitochondria against oxidative stress.
Remember I told you those little tiny
bad guys are running around with uh
garden shears chopping at everything.
Think about that as oxidative stress.
Those are the free radicals that can
damage your body, including your
mitochondria. By having more
polyphenols, you're protecting your
mitochondria from the damage from these
oxidative uh stress particles, right?
So, if you want your mitochondria to be
operating at peak performance, this is
what you actually want to do. All right?
You want to actually have colorful foods
that contain natural bioactives. So, eat
the rainbow is a is exactly what they
were talking about. Hey, if you like
that video, then you're going to love
this one. Check it out.